


Truth

by JaneTurenne



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Community: watsons_woes, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneTurenne/pseuds/JaneTurenne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Holmes's return, Lestrade pulls the Great Detective aside to discuss a certain incident during his years away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for challenge #2 at watsons_woes. Warnings for mention of near-suicide.

"That’s where they found him, clinging to the railing. Dead to the world, if not yet in the river. Though he would have been, if MacPherson and his partner hadn’t happened along when they did.”

My voice rasped harsh in my own ears. That was how I wanted it; he deserved harshness, though I was surprised I had managed to summon it. Once there had been only two men in London who could talk that way to Sherlock Holmes, but one couldn’t seem to be bothered, and the other was too damned kindhearted for his own good. It didn’t matter if I had the nerve or not—the job was mine to do. Besides, it’s hard to be intimidated by a ghost that breathes.

Whether or not he felt the words I couldn’t tell. He was looking through me in that way he has, the one that makes my stomach turn. Though I was never any great scholar as a boy, I always did like Greek. I had read about Tiresias, the blind prophet, but I never guessed I would meet a man who could see everything when he wasn’t looking. When his eyes lose the world that way, all the stories become his stories. He took mine away from me and began to tell it.

“The constables took charge of him. They bundled him off to the station. They had no charges to bring against him, and so no reason to hold him there, but they were unwilling to release him in that state. And so they sent for you, because…” In that mood, I expected him to go on. But he refocused then, coming back into his skin, and swallowed rather more obviously than usual, and stood up just a bit straighter.

I don’t claim to know much about Mr. Holmes. Up to that moment, I might have agreed with them who call him heartless. I didn’t stop being angry with him—I’m angry with him still—but it meant something, to know that he couldn’t say it. I finished the sentence.

“Because everyone else in his life was dead. Or so he thought.”

He nodded once, curtly. His jaw was set. He darted a glance at me, and then looked back at the bridge, staring at the spot where John Watson had stood six months before, and at the Thames beyond. For the first time in my life, I was sure beyond doubting that Sherlock Holmes and I were imagining the same scene—a little pile on the bridge, shoes and hat and neatly-folded jacket, and a cruel black hole in the thin November ice…

“Thank you,” he said. I wheeled round to gape at him. He was still facing the bridge, but I watched his eyes shut, as though he couldn’t stand the sight a moment more. I still don’t know whether I imagined the tremors in his hands. “Thank you for…” it took him a moment to get to the words “…for not letting him be alone.” ‘As I did’, he didn’t add, but we both heard it anyhow.

He turned back towards me then. Most of his face was just as blank as always, but his eyes were almost black, and there was a question in them.

I couldn’t forgive him, not yet. Not while I could remember the slump of doctor’s shoulders that night. Mr. Holmes may have been the one who faked his death, but the walking corpse he left behind wasn’t his own.

“How could it have failed to occur to you, Mr. Holmes? You with that intellect of yours? His wife was already ill when you disappeared; you _knew_ he’d lose her, too. Did you never stop to think just how it would be for him, to do without the both of you at once?"

He smiled briefly, a terrible little smile worse than any of his sneers or scowls. It took me a moment to realize why. Mr. Holmes' face, I understood suddenly, doesn't reflect what he's feeling, not as a rule. He had come to the end of a case; he was ready to explain himself; the time had come to smile. It didn't matter how much he was hurting. For the first time in my life, I found myself pitying Sherlock Holmes. I can't say that I enjoyed it.

"I...miscalculated. The remnants of Moriarty's gang, Moran in particular, are dangerous men, though not without some strange sense of honor. I knew that if I stayed in London to track them down, Watson would insist on aiding me in the chase. But I could not protect him properly, not while he lived away from Baker Street; even I must sleep on occasion. Normally I would have trusted him to look after himself, but he was so distracted--justifiably-- by his wife's worsening condition that he would have made an easy target. I believed that by disappearing I was keeping him safe, for he and Moran would stay out of each others' paths so long as he believed me to be dead. I had ignored the fact that there are other dangers than air guns in this world."

He was speaking more slowly now, and seemed almost puzzled, as though he were working it out in his head as he went along. He had the facts down, right enough, but now he'd got to the part of the story less in his own line. "It was terribly selfish of me, I suppose. It did not become clear to me until I returned that, to save myself from a hardship I could not have endured, I inflicted it upon the very person I wished to protect. I knew that I should be lost without my Boswell..."

"But you never considered that he would be lost without you," I finished for him.

He half-started. He hadn't really been talking to me. Realizing how much he had said, he stiffened, and the April day turned to January. I don't mind admitting that there were moments in the last three years I wished to have him back, but I never missed _that_ look. "I appreciate your courtesy in telling me all this, Inspector. And now, if you will excuse me..."

"One moment, Mr. Holmes." Going against Mr. Holmes when he's in one of his commanding moods is only a _little_ more difficult than staring down a loaded gun, and Lord knows I've done that often enough before. I managed. "It's not the past I asked you here to speak of; there's nothing any of us can do about that, but be glad it wasn't worse. It's the future."

A look of something that was almost fear flashed across his face, but within an instant he had himself back under control. "Do you believe that Watson is likely to try something of the kind again?"

The fact that _he_ was asking _my_ opinion, and about the doctor, of all things, staggered me. "I don't think it's likely, no. But that's no excuse for you to go on treating him the way you have been." I tried to speak as simply and honestly as I was able. He wouldn't stand for being lectured or preached at, but Mr. Holmes values the truth more than any man I've ever met. "I don't mean the little things, Mr. Holmes-- criticizing his writing, or being short with him, or waking him at odd hours to go off adventuring-- because he knows you well enough to take those in his stride. But it hurts him when you don't trust him, even when the deception is harmless, and doubly so when you fool him into thinking that you're hurt or worse. I know that this wasn't the first time; Inspector Morton told me the story of Culverton Smith and his ivory box. I can't tell you that you _must_ be more open with him. But he deserves better, and that's a fact. It isn't every man who has as loyal a friend as you do. You might behave as though you know it."

He looked at me, and at the bridge, and back at me, a strange look from behind swirling eyes. Then he nodded, slowly, and put out his hand. I shook it.

“I’ll remember.” His voice was soft, and his words held a million meanings. By the time I had sorted the half of them, he had turned, and put one leg in front of the other, and was gone.


End file.
